Pakistan court halts release of accused in Pearl case

By Islamuddin Sajid

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AA) – Pakistan’s top court on Monday stopped the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, the prime accused in the murder case of a US journalist, Daniel Pearl, until at least Tuesday.

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, headed by Justice Umar Ata Bandial, heard the government's appeal.

It, however, rejected the attorney general's request to suspend the Sindh High Court's (SHC) earlier verdict, which called for the release of the accused. The court also summoned the entire case record for the hearing Tuesday.

On Jan. 28, the apex court ordered Sheikh's release, rejecting the Sindh government's appeal against the high court order.

Last April, the high court acquitted the four accused and ordered their release. However, the Pakistani government, citing "public safety" concerns, continued with their detention.

In December, the high court set aside the government's detention orders and ordered their immediate release.

The four men – Sheikh, Fahad Naseem, Salman Saqib, and Sheikh Adil – were found guilty of the abduction and beheading of the American journalist in Pakistan.

Pearl, a former South Asia bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in January 2002 and killed after a month in the southern port city of Karachi. His dismembered body was found four months after his disappearance.

In June 2002, an anti-terror court sentenced Sheikh to death and the other three to life imprisonment.

However, nearly 18 years after their conviction, first the SHC in April last year, and then the Supreme Court acquitted all the defendants, declaring that the prosecution had failed to prove the case against them.

Washington said it is "deeply concerned" by the decision, following which Islamabad filed the review petition.

A 2011 investigative report by Georgetown University in the US claims the actual man behind the journalist's abduction and beheading is Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US in 2001.

Mohammad, who was arrested by the Pakistani security forces and handed over to the US in 2003, is currently awaiting trial at the Guantanamo Bay.